San Francisco Chronicle Top 100 Nonfiction Books of the West (41)

Certain deeds are so familiar to us that we lose our sense of perspective
on just what was accomplished. Thus, during the recent anniversary
of the Moon Landing, I'm sure everyone had a moment where they were sort
of taken aback and realized--Holy Cripes! Those guys went to the Moon in
a vehicle that's less advanced technologically than my car. Similarly,
the journey of Lewis and Clark is one of those things that lurks in your
consciousness from grade school on, but you never really think about what
they did or what it meant. Stephen Ambrose has provided the perfect
remedy for that oversight with this excellent book.

Structurally the book is a biography of Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809)
with heavy emphasis on the 28-month, 8,000-mile expedition that he
lead (ending in September 1806), at President Thomas Jefferson's behest,
along with William Clark (1770-1838). Along the way, Ambrose, writing
in a nearly conversational style, weighs in on the many controversies surrounding
the journey and the participants. He synthesizes the extensive scholarship
about the trip, provides ample samples of the journals they kept and draws
upon his own personal knowledge of their route. What emerges is,
first of all, a sweeping but detailed portrait of the trip, of the hardships
and difficulties they faced and of the fortitude and courage that they
demonstrated every step of the way. Second, and more importantly,
he puts the whole venture into perspective for us. We share in Jefferson's
vision of an America that stretches from ocean to ocean; familiar as this
is today, there was no certainty that it would become a reality at the
time (early 1800's). Ambrose nearly overwhelms us with
the sheer volume of physical geography and species of flora and fauna that
these men discovered. From April through November of 1805 they were
in territory that was completely unmapped. (Had their journals and
maps been published more rapidly, virtually every river and physical feature
from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean would bear the names that
they originated.) Finally, as the story wends it's way to the tragic
conclusion, when a lonely, debt burdened and deeply depressed Lewis shot
himself to death in a travelers lodge on the Natchez Trace, one can't help
feeling that America had lost one of it's greatest heroes.

Ambrose has done a great job of recapturing the drama and the deeper
meaning of a chapter from our history that is all too easily taken for
granted.